Arbutus

So yesterday we journeyed to find a tree.

I saw a little red sapling growing but I had no idea what it was.  Then a dog started howling and I howled with it and all my Wolves appeared and took me off to a tree.  I did not look up or see it's leaves.  It was growing in that very organic soil you get in coniferous woods and we wanted to dig and dig.  We also wanted to scratch at the tree.  It was red and it's bark was peely and there were patches that loked like we had scratched where the tree looked sort of stringy underneath.  The tree was not a straight tree and it bulged at the bottom so you could see where the roots were headed.

I asked for help and discovered red fungus used as warpaint and the the Dogwood which i more of a bush but then someone suggested the Arbutus and well, that is that...

This site has some lovely photos of the tree and this site has a traditional story about the tree.  This tree feeds hummingbirds and butterflies with it's flower, and birds and critters with it's berries.  It has deep roots which hold the soil and prevent erosion,  It is a tree that grows happily with others as long as it is not smothered and sometimes forms a very close relationship with other trees, it has even been known to act as a nursemaid to Douglas Fir trees.  The story makes it clear that it is a tree of abundance and generosity, a good tree.

Types of the Arbutus tree also grow elsewhere including Ireland and across Western Europe.  This is a traditional song from this site.

Our king, he has a daughter fair; Arbutus is her name
And he has gone a soldiering to the court of the king of Spain.

Where our harpers sang of her gentle grace, of her beauty and her face
And the Spanish king's declared his love, begged she might share his name

Our Irish king, he's hurried home with all speed he could command
And there he's told his daughter fair he's promised away her hand

Her lovely eyes were filled with tears and her cheeks were scarlet red
"Oh Father, dear, I can't marry him; I'd rather you see me dead."

"Oh but you shall do as I command, I swear it on my sword!
Go dress yourself in bright array; I'll hear not another word."

"But Father dear, I love a man, Will Winsboro is his name,
And I'd not leave my own true love for the hand of the king of Spain."

"But I swore you were a maiden fair, and my Chiefs did all agree!
I command you now, take off your gown that I may examine thee."

"Oh, Father dear, don't shame me so; I would rather you see me dead
Before I'd let your noble lords search for my maidenhead."

"Take off, take off your very brown gown and stand upon the stone,
For if you be a maiden or none, the truth it must be known."

So she's taken off her very brown gown, and she's let the gown fall free
But before its hem could touch the ground, she's turned into a tree

And her lover's turned to the gentle breeze; through her branches he does
     play
And she has shed her soft brown bark 'till this very day.

And while this Mediterranean species is not the one from my journey because it would not tolerate living in the wild in cold Northern places, there is a relationship here.  So I will continue to look at European lore too.  It seems that this tree is part of the symbol for Madrid and these arms also show a Bear eating the fruit.  Bears like to eat the fruit when it has fermented slightly so the bears become drunk from eating it.

In addition, Hieronymous Bosch's famous paininting the Garden of Earthly Delights is also known as the Painting of the Strawberry Tree.  This is curious to me as I have always been fascinated with this painting, ever since childhood.  My parents had a classical album with this painting on it's cover and I would sit and look at this painting for hours....  I never had the feeling of evilness or sin from the central painting and in reading about Hieronymous Bosch I found that there is a theory that this painting was produced for the leader of a group called the Adamites and that Bosch too was a member.  In reading this I felt like my head had been knocked sideways, dizzy and out of myself.  I wonder at the draw of this painting on me.

Back to the tree though, in some places the leaves are used as an astringent and internally as a urinary tract disinfectant.  Externally it is used as a bath soak for hemorrhoids, perineal tears and post partum bleeding.  I wonder if there is a healing there for me, with my endless bleeding...

The wood is used for inlay work because of it's prettiness but it's charcoal is the best for making gunpowder.  Apparently this tree saved humanity from the great flood.

Shark Relationships

So Shark is my totem for the Moon of Inter-relationships and I have been very remiss because we are now into the Moon of Surrender, so I should be writing about Horse.  But I didn't want to miss out Shark because Shark and I have issues....

I don't feel strongly connected to Shark an I don't think this Moon is fully functional at all.  Last year when I dreamt of my totem for this Moon I was hunting for Shark but did not actually find it.  My Years of Inter-relations have not been easy and bullying has been a feature.  But I can see parallels here to Shark - a few bad sharks and the rest get picked on...  They compete with man for fish and man tries to cull them hard.  Man likes to eat their fins and there is a huge market for them, no matter the age of the Shark.  I remember seeing a programme about the Oceans and in the Far East sharks are struggling, there was a n image of rows and rows of juvenile sharks laid on a beach with all their fins removed and the rest of the shark was just scrapped.

I wonder if my fortunes within inter-relationships are linked to those of the Shark...  Maybe Shark needs my help, just as much as I need it's...

I have watched a couple of programmes featuring Sharks this Moon.  The first was on swimming with the Great White and showed that they are intelligent and very hierarchical and that they understand we are not prey.  The second was on the changing behaviour of Black Tip Sharks off South Africa and how it also shows that they are hieararchical, highly intelligent and co-operative...  This seems to be a shock to science.

We have this image of Sharks as almost rabid creatures, lone, mad creatures attacking things not their food in a frenzy.  Not true.  Not at all.

I remember my first encounter with a Shark where I feel in love with them.  I went to see a high tech graphics simulator presentaiton nearly twenty years ago.  Every day tech is probably getting up to what I saw then.  They had programmed a Shark.  They had looked in detail at how Sharks move and watching this shark swim around this room made the sheer complicatedness of it's movement very clear.  It was beautiful.  They are amazing creatures...

And I find I  have run out of time because the drumming circle calls....  I shall have to come back to this tomorrow...

Moon Wind

Conversations with others have shown that my trip around the Wheel is a little unusual but the purpose of it is clear!  Normally people focus on their roles and the five totems that go with them.  this is the bulk of what we are and what we do.  Instead of looking at these I dived into a journey with the Moons which is lovely and bountiful and has been such a source of goodness for me.  It seems if our Moons are broken or unbalanced then so are our Roles / Winds and we have to go back to our Moons to fix things.  Moons are our ego, our inner child.

So I don't know my five main totems but I know most of my Moon totems which is an unusual way round to be!

I found my first eight Moon totems as we processed through each Moon.  This drew to a halt at the Blue Moon and we began again.  However, last year was the Moon of Breaking Masks for me and I found my totem for that Moon during that year and this year is my Moon of Reason and I have found my totem for this Moon too!  I have to wait a few Moons to reach the last two Moons, Humility and Metamorphosis.

I find now that if I am dreaming anything related to any of the Moons, my totem for that Moon appears in the dream.  I like this, it works well for me.  It also leaves me a gap in my Dreaming intent to look at something else and to see what the dreams bring to me, hopefully my totems for the four Winds I am unsure of.  I need to dig at this.  Winds run from New Moon to New Moon and they do not run in sequence so I am unsure if I should work with the Wind of the Moon or the to lok at them in my own sequence. 

I do know that we are currently in the Peacekeeper which sits in my West and that I found a new totem this weekend, or rather, it found me.  I don't know that I want to talk about that here yet, I thnk I want to sit with it for a bit and brew it up, or should that be run?
 
I don't know why this is the place I set my intents but it is, so I guess I am looking to work out how to work with my Dreamer at looking at my roles.

The Potent Ant

So back to the Moon of Omnipotence, which starts today.  The reverse is Impotent and so often this Moon had been about Impotency for me, being out of control and swept along by events.  A time when my life flips over and becomes something else for a time.  This Moon though, I have choosen to stay on the rollercoaster, to see where it takes me.  I definately had a choice, to leave my job or to stay and here I am.  Waiting to see where else life takes me.

My totem for this Moon is however Ant and I know Ant has helped me before.  It helps me do little things to accomplish a big thing.  One more step up the mountain and then one more until I reach the top.  Ant has also bitten me a time or two (I went through a phase of accidentally sitting on Ant nests as a child) and every summer they try and invade my house at least once...

Ants are related to Wasps and Bees and like Wasps and Bees, they form colonies like Wasps and Bees as well.  These colonies vary considerably in size, from a few dozen predatory individuals living in a natural cavity to highly organised millions with a huge territory.  Virtually all colonies have a fertile female Queen and some fertile male drones but some have more than one Queen as well as sterile wingless female soldiers and workers.

Ants are everywhere except Antartica and a few islands.  In some places they form as much as 25% of the Biomass.  They have evolved along with their environments so that they have a huge variety of relationships within ecosystems.  Some mimic other species to act as a lure for prey or to scare predators away.  Some have a parasitic reltionship with their food...  In some relationships they benefit without harming the other beings in the relationship but in other relationships, both species benefit.

Their colonies are considered a super-organism because they are so organised and work so well together.  They tap resources, modify environments and defend themselves.  They solve problems.  They have been around since flowering plants evolved over 150 million years.

They vary in size from 0.75 to 52 milimetres.  The largest ever Ant found in a fossil was a queen 6 cm long with a wingspan of 15cm!  Most are red or black but a few in the tropics are green and some even have a metallic lustre.  They have an exoskeleton but they do not breath as gases are taken inthrough the exoskeleton.  Their circulatory system is not like ours either with a single tube, which is perforated, along the top of their bodies.  They have generally poor eyesight and some are even blind.  They are very good at detecting movement but se in low resolution. Their antennae are extremely good at detecting chemicals and vibrations and they communicate with each other through touching with their antennae.

They have six legs and only fertile males and Queens have wings but the Queens lose them after their nuptial flights.  Some species have changed their reproductive organs into stings but for most the fearsome part is their mandibles. 

Ants begin as eggs and if they are fertilized they become female and if not, male.  They hatch into larvae which remain pretty much stationary and have to be fed.  The workers feed the larvae but regurgitating liquid food but they may also receive pieces of solid food and in some species they will be transported to food sources.  In some species the amount of food supplied controls the caste the of the ant.  In others the role of the ant changes throughout their life, beginning with feedin larvae and the progressing to nest digging and finally to defence.

Winged Males leave the nest first on nuptial flights and look for a mating ground.  They secrete chemicals for the new Queen to follow.  Some species will have the Queen fertilized by one male but other by multiple males.  The Queen then finds a suitable nest site, breaks off her wings and begins to lay eggs.  The first born are small but do not pass through the larval stage so can begin to serve the colony immediately. 

A Queen can live for 30 years and some workers as long as 1 to 3 years but males only live for a few weeks.  In the tropics colonies are active all year round but in cooler regions they may have a period of inactivity with larvae in stasis or with no larvae present at all.

Ant communications are highly sophisticated and are largely based on the release of pheromones.  If an ant finds food, on it's way back to the nest it lays a scent trail which other ants find and reinforce.  When the food runs out they stop laying scent so that the trail fades.  If the path changes due to a blockage then they lay scent along the new path.  Some species use scent to distinguish groups on different tasks.  Some ants will release an alarm scent when crushed causing ants to aggresively swarm.  Some ants even use scent for propaganda, causing enemy ants to attack themselves.  They pass scents to each other to communicate and when a Queen stops producing a particular scent, workers begin to raise new queens.

They defend themselves by biting, stinging or spraying.  Some Ants have incredibly painful stings while others spray formic acid.  One species has an incredibly fast bite reflex, like a sprung trap.  Some ants use their bite reflexes to catapult intruders away while others will catapult themselves away from danger.  Some ants commit suicide when endangered in order to release chemicals to kill foes and save their colonies.  IN other colonies a small group leaves each nght to seal the colony from the outside.  Defence against disease is also important and some ants remove dead ants from the nest based on smell.  Physical threats such as flooding have a range of responses too, from drinking the water and excreting it outside the nest to anaerobic respiration in some mangrove species.

Ants learn and they teach.  An experienced Ant will lead an unexperienced ant to food in a process called tandem running and the leader will slow down for the other ant.  Some experiments show that where some individual workers are less successful in finding food, eventually they will take on different roles such as caring for larvae.

Ant nests vary hugely but not all ants make them.  Some are nomadic and make temporary nests with their own bodies by holding each other together.  Weaver ants use their larvae to make silk and tie leaves together.  Many ants will avoid a site with dead ants and some species will abandon a site as soon as disease becomes present.  Some Ants even cut and chew leaves to grow a fungus which is what they live on.  Some Ants even farm, feeding aphids and tapping them for honeydew before herding them to new food or caterpillars which are herded to food in the day and taken to the nest at night.

Ants are endlessly varied in their tactics for living but they have also uses for humans.  Some are used as stitches for wounds, biting across the wounds and then having their bodies sliced off.  Others secrete chemicals that are used as medicines.  Ants are used to harvest rooibos tea as the seeds are small and hard to harvest the ants gather them and then they are gathered from the ant nests.  We also eat many different types of ant eggs and also ants themselves in various parts of the world.  Of course they can be pests as well, we all know that....

I think Ant is an amazong totem to have for the Moon of Omnipotence.  As a superorganism they achieve incredible things by doing one small tiny task each, by cooperating.  They are patient, ordered, disciplined.  They work for the community and plan for it's future.  They are happy to see dreams grow slowly, as long as they are growing.  They are the diligent workers of life.  They sacrifice themselves knowing that in the end, they will get there.  They just get on with it, without emotion, they ride the wave of life.

They are also well placed to cope with adversity.  If a flood comes and washes them away they make a raft.  If they get hurt they call in reinforcements.  If their nest is flooded they suck out the water or carry on as normal using bubbles of air to survive.  They are flexible and they learn and they get there through dogged persistance.

I guess Ant came along to help me survive the wild rides of fate I seem to have during this Moon sometimes but it also adds to that diligent work ethic of mine.  I do a boring job for the team and I just get on with it, but I am part of the team, getting us all somewhere...

Value Added Family

So this Moon, the Moon of Prot4ection or Value has been a really interesting one.  There has been a very strong theme of Family, in all it's varieties as well as care.  There are a lot of stories from this moon, so many it is kind of hard to know where to begin.  Stories take up time though and have made it hard for me to blog because when I have had time I have felt pretty drained.

I went away with F for a week with my family and while there we managed to make a day to go over and see my Great Aunt and my Gran.  I asked them lots of family orientated questions which my Aunt enjoyed a lot and my Gran didn't.  But to fair my Gran doesn't really seem to enjoy anything, she isn't really connected, it feels like she is a difting little cloud waiting to die and to be young and beautiful again.

I spent a lot of time photographing old documents and photos too and this has been very rewarding.  It seems I come from a family of packrats on both sides.  There was a photo of a man we could not identify but from the age of the photo I knew it had to be a direct ancestor because people just didn't do many photos back then and they didn't get hundreds of copies either.  They were valuable things.  I had a moment of inspiration though (no idea where that came from, but I could hazard a guess!) and looked at my Great Great Grandfather's picture, which we have because he was a petty criminal and it is attached to his record.  (he stole bread and went absent without leave from the militia, amongst other less pleasant things).  The two men were definately not the same but the family resemblance was unmistakeable.  But there was little resemblance to my Grandfather, so I looked at my Grandfather's siblings and it is unmistakeable that they are all part of the family line.  I was pretty convinced I had found a picture of my Great Grandfather, the only one that seems to have survived amongst any of his descendants.

The next morning, F said to me, 'do you remember talking to me when I came to bed?' and he laughed.  I didn't remember a thing!  It seems I asked him who it was when he came to bed which surprised him and then I asked who it was who came to bed earlier which surprised him even more.  I then proceeded tot ell him it must have been the ghost that was in bed earlier and that that record was definately for my Great Grandfather!  I guess I had been dreaming and because it was so early in the night, not a single slither of memory of it remained.  I think my Great Grandfather wanted us all to know what he looks like....

I also found a letter from a bank saying that some one called SC had received some money when a joint account between her and another lady had been closed following the other ladies death.  This opened up a whole treasure trail.  My Great Great Great Grandfather RC had a sister called SC and she went into service.  She worked for a very fashionable family, a Magistrate and then at the next census I can not find her, maybe she was abroad but after that she is working for the lady she had the joint account with!  She was a Housekeeper for this Lady, first in Kensington and then at a Castle. On the first of these two censuses she had my Great Great Grandmother AC working with her.  Ac then got married and on the next census SC Junior is working with her.

SC received enough money to retire and live out her life in comfort.  She brought a house and SC Junior lived with her as a companion until SC's death.  SC Junior then went to live with her sister EC who was a spinster school teacher.  Sc Junior died sometime before EC and there is a letter from EC's death which shows that SC Junior left everything to EC for as long as EC lived but then it was all to be passed on to any remaining sisters.  Except that EC was the last of the sisters alive so the money passed to all the nieces but not a single nephew.

At that time women could not marry and be independent.  if they married, everything they had became their husbands.  Men were the ones with earning potential, not women so life was tough for them generally.  This story is all about women taking care of women.  One ancestor was rewarded for loyal service and friendship across the classes and then took care of several generations of women that came after.

While I was researching all this, the speakerson my computer went nuts.  Very much like they do when a text is coming through except that it went on longer and the sounds were more varied.  I have found a few odd things have happened when I have been researching particular ancestors!

So moving back into the present time...  A friend of ours has needed some care too.  At Christmas she was happily engaged and pregnant, living with her fiancee and all was rosie.  By new year she had discovered he had been cheating on her for a long time and the other woman was also pregnant.  He is now living with the other woman.  There is a lot more to this story however that I shall not share here and he has behaved very, very badly!  We have spent a certain amount of time with her but also being onlookers in a situation like this is emotional and hard.  She is a tough lady though and seems to be coming through so well.

Lastly work has been very tough.  They called my department and a couple of others up to announce redundancies.  My team is like family, a very good family I adore (except my Boss!) and I lost two of them.  Both went voluntarily and there was a part of me that was jealous they were getting to go.  As I thought about it though I realised I had to stay to the end which got me thinking about where that thought had come from and I realised that part of me knew that it was all going to come to an end.  And I am not the only one, the general thought seems to be that the place will close within two years tops.  But the Managers think we are all daft and we have to pretend we don't know and keep on with our jobs until they chose to spring it on us.

I don't know why I have to stay but I do.  In the past I have often left job situations that became in the slightest bit tricky and I have often wondered why I can not leave this one even though at times it has been the worst ever, but I have to stay...  I looked at some jobs and that night I had two dreams

There was five cows and they were pregnant and they represented parts of my life and they would each lie down when they were happy.  Two would not lie down and nothing I could do could make them.  Then one changed into a bull and it was dancing round and all the cows were dancing around and it was chaos, but beautiful...

There was an emaciated Kingfisher and a Heron was trying to eat it, I was desperately trying to stop the Heron but it got the Kingfisher, and then there was a big sleek Heron chick in it's place.  Heron is my totem for this Moon and is all about being aggressively self-deterministic.  Kingfisher is about contentment, happiness and abundance.  I interpreted this as meaning that leaving would feed my independence and self-determination but take away my true happiness, even if it is a bit on the thin side!  I don't need two Herons! Not at that cost...  But soon one of those cows will turn into a Bull and my life will whirl in beautiful chaotic dancing for a time....  And I can see that happening when the site closes....

So here I am, lessons on family from so many directions, about sticking it out, about caring, about loyalty and I know the path I am walking for the next little while and why.  But I also wonder, what story will my ancestors see for my life?  What will be the one small insignificant seeming detail that takes on a life of it's own?

Heron Stalks the Moon

So last year, I wasn't really focused when I went through the Moon of Protection.  F and I went away on our Honeymoon and because we were not living our normal life it was hard for me to pinpoint this Moon at all really.  Except that I really value quality time with F.  I love it when we can explore places together, delving into their history and science and scoiety.  I love just lounging around with him, talking and eating good food.

I would have struggled to identify any totem in the waking life but my totem for this Moon did visit me in a dream, somehow.  I remember waking in the night and thinking to myself, something along the lines of 'wow, that was easy, Heron must be my totem them for this Moon.'  and then falling back asleep.  All trace of the dream was gone by morning and only that thought remained.  Whatever happened in the dream must have been very clear for me to have been able to think that while so very close to being brain dead!

The RSPB puts Bitterns and Herons together and lists the UK as having five, Bittern, Cattle Egret, Great White Egret, Grey Heron and Little Egret.  But to me Heron conjures up the image of the Grey Heron and I imagine this would have been the bird that appeared to me in the dream for me to identify it so clearly.

Grey Herons are large birds, standing up to one metre tall and having a wingspan of up to two metres.  They have very long legs and necks and can stand with their heads down by their body by making their necks S shaped or with their necks straight.  They are wading birds, designed to be able to stand in shallow water and fish but they are not fussy eaters, small mammals, amphibians, small birds and eggs also go down...

For me the imagine of a Heron conjures up one stood in the water, completely still, watching what is going on below the surface and then suddenly in a flash of movement, their head shoots in to the water and comes back with some food which it gulps down.  I can also clearly picture them stalking elegantly, taking off ponderously and flying with those huge wings, neck bent up to the body.

They are opportunists and their behaviour reflects their environment.  In some countries they are migratory birds, but here they remain all year round.  In some places they feed or roost communally but I have only ever seen one feeding in a place.  They like trees to roost in, off the ground and they build messy nest platforms out of sticks.  If no trees or sticks are available they will nest on the ground, on cliffs, in bushes or in reed beds and their nests may be made of reeds or if nothing is available they will just be a scrape in the ground.  They will be found in any watery environment, lakes, rivers, garden ponds, canals, ditches, river deltas, mangroves (not that we have those in the UK) salt marshes, estuaries, mudflats and beaches.

If they roost communally then they will be anywhere from 2km to 38km from preferred feeding grounds.  I know Herons will visit different places and will fish out garden ponds and small lakes.  Many people put nets over garden ponds to protect them from Herons.  When it comes to feeding, Herons will move their head from side to side when they spot prey underwater as this helps them calculate distance.  They will walk very slowly and see what they can find or stir their feet or probe for things.  Grey Herons have been observed using bait to bring in prey such as bread or seeds.

Herons are monogamous and courting takes place on the nest.  The male arrives first and begins building before trying to attract a female.  Some females have been observed to attach themselves to impotent male Herons and then they seek sex elsewhere.  They lay 3 to 7 eggs.

Herons are calm birds which are always patient but focused and ready to take action.  They see clearly, past the reflections and disturbances and visual effects of water.  They literally walk in two worlds and are happiest on this divide - they don't swim.  They are birds of contemplation and grace but also highly practical and pragmatic, eating and using anything to get by.  They must stand with both feet firmly planted on the ground and they are aggressively self reliant.  They know how to take advantage of events others may not even notice.  They work with great precision and efficiency, conserving energy.

They are social but work alone.  They do not need a lot of people in their lives and are not afraid of standing out and being unique.  They see no need to keep up with the Joneses and they know what is best for them and follow their own path.  There is a certain showmanship and self-assurance and this flair for drama contrasting with the extreme quiet and patience can suggest an emotional dichotmoy, a tendency to go from one extreme to the other, drama and melodrama to oppression and repression. Learning to balance these two extremes is an important task but once done, they make good counsellors. Herons are shamanic guides by they are all about emotional stability and will not undermine this.

So how does this relate to this Moon?  This Moon is all about what we Value in the opposites of Protection and Imprisonment.  So often what I value is Love, that sort of Love that is so much a part of Marriage.  I value being in a good Partnership.  My second year of this Moon was the year I spent with my first love, literally.  It was a good year and he was a good man, but as I mved out of Value there was other things I needed to focus on and do and he could not walk that path with me.  I am lucky now that I have a man who can and does walk my path with me.  So much of what Heron is about, are things I value:  walking in both worlds, having two feet firmly on the ground, being emotionally stable, efficiency, taking advantage of opportunities, monogamous partnership.

You might think it is odd having efficiency there but it is important to me.  Ask F...  He is not efficient and sometimes when we need to get things done he frustrates the hell out of me!  And then I tell him he is not beig efficient and he laughs at me.  Wasp, my totem for the Moon of Welcome has this thread of efficency and knowing the right way to do things too.  I guess walking my path and F are the two things I value most and the two things I want to protect the most.

Breakthrough

So the lovely Suzi recently said in an email that she felt like I would have 'a massive breakthrough at some point' and it occurred to me I have...  In fact there has been a couple...  but sometimes the hard thing is working out what they mean and how to bring those words into the waking world and what sense they make here, if that is clear to anyone!

A while back I started suffering from nightmares.  I found this scary because I have never had dreams that dealt with fears where I have been very scared before, not even as a child.  My sister would drift through my room to my parents bedroom, pale as a ghost.  i used to be quite envious of the excuse to go sleep with Mum and Dad, and so, sometimes when I was awake in the night and wanted to sleep with them, I would imagine bad things to summon up a few tears...

So suddenly to find myself dreaming nasty things was a challenge.  I began to wonder and worry about what these dreams were saying about the state of my mental health!  A girl who bumped into an old college friend and accepted the offer of dinner to catch up only to discover he had always been fixated on her and had become a serial killer, killing girls like her...  The little boy kidnapped...  The teenage girl left alone in an airport, with no ticket but after security....  The couple killed in their home....  There was no actual bad endins though, because I was able to twist the story away from the truly awful and help the main characters escape.

Then one night I dreamt I was in my bedroom lying on my bed but it was a glorious day and the room was flooded with sunlight.  I turned to look at the person next to me and it turned out to be my spirit guide.  He told me not to worry, that I was dreaming the fears of my ancestors.  And after that, I stopped worrying that this was my unhealthy mind and accepted that these were not my fears, not my scenarios.

For a couple of weeks my dreams were filled with fearful scenarios but as I stopped blocking them and worrying about them, this was no longer a problem.  Some of the dreams could even be pinpointed to whereabouts they would have come from.  In one dream, a lady was driving a delivery van but it carried important cargo.  She was stopped by a police officer who turned out to be with the enemy but she was able to defend herself and get the cargo away.  In the Second World War, my Grandfather was a driver.  I imagine he transported all sorts of things around and i can also imagine my Gran thinking up all sorts of scenarios....

I recently started reading Robert Moss's The Dreamers Book of the Dead: A Soul Traveler's Guide to Death, Dying and the Other Side.  One thing he says is that sometimes we need to use our imaginations for the dead.  I think this is what I have been doing.  I think some of my Ancestors have been trapped in a recurring nightmare that goes round and round and they just don't know how to escape.  I think I have been dreaming them ways out.

The best example I have of this was the falling dream.  In this dream, not surprisingly, I was falling with another person.  We would fall towards the ground and then, just before we hit we would pass through a gate and fall all over again.  I tried all sorts of possible ways of getting us out of there....  I remember one of them was a helicopter free falling by us and trying to pull us in but the danger of the propellers and matching speeds made it impossible.   In the end, a couple of men with parachutes jumped out and fell with us  and caught us to them and strapped us to them and brought us safely down.

Can you imagine falling, over and over, unable to think of a way out?

I think dreaming fears is linked to my having passed the Spider Gate.  I wonder how passing other gates would affect my dreaming?

The other breakthrough involved a dream where I was eating in a mediterranean restaurant.  I was talking to the waiter and I told him I didn't know what I was.  He was surprised and disappeared into the back and came back with his Grandmother.  She placed her finger on my third eye and shut her eyes.  When she was done, she opened them and told me I was a Walker, A Weaver and a Shifter.

I have only the vaguest idea of what these things mean really and I have even less idea about what benefits they can have in the physical world.  They seem to me, to be very much talents of the inbetween, of the Dreamer.  That too makes sense too, because the wind at the heart of my circle is the Dreamer and my totem for this is the Crow.

A Dreamwalker is one who can walk into the dreams of others.  I know I do this.  I walk through their dreams, their stories and I wear their bodies and think their thoughts.  But I don't understand the subtleties of this and you can be sure there are some.  I feel quite strongly that these are well defined talents with hidden depths whose paths we have lost somewhat or are only remembered by a few.  I also find it easy to navigate the dream world on journeys.  Once I have been somewhere I can get to and from that place very easily on future occasions.  I just open a door and step through.  There are hints that many Native American Indians just vanished when White Men came, that they stepped through the veil, opened a door and went elsewhere.

A Shifter, obviously shifts shape and again this is something I do.  I often wear feathers to travel in journeys and I have twice danced the elements at the Equinox in the shape of a Dragon.  Many books talk of how Native American Indians used to be able to shift shape with ease, in this reality. 

A Weaver is the less obvious I think but before the dream I had a journey at Samhain.  We were to connect with an ancient Ancestor, back in the dawns of time, we were to make our way to an ancestral cave.  I did this and got a little more than I bargained for.  I met with an adept in a dark hole in the back of a cave.  He was quite a character and told me off if I started to drift or lose focus.  He told me how Spider Woman wove the worlds into being.  He showed me her web, how everything is made from the same huge giant web, twisted and curved and prodded and pulled into all the shapes of everything we are, connected.  He showed me how to unpick as well as how to breath spirits through the web into a shape. 

My suspicion that this must be what a Weaver is was confirmed by Robert Moss's book, he talks of how in many of the lands of the dead, the matter is formed using imagination from an underlying grey material which is plastic in form.  His description of the material was familiar although different - it is so hard to describe impossible things!  He called the people who make things over in this realm of Memorydream, Weavers.

So I have been gifted with three talents and they all relate directly to the dreaming.  I have a vague idea of what they are, but no idea of the deeper meanings.  I have no idea whether or not I can affect anything in the waking world in the slightest.  Of course, if we lived in the dreaming then things would be very different indeed.  I know I can help myself with these gifts, that they make journeying and dreaming easier for me and that I learn a lot from both, but I have no idea how I can help others in reality and I have a lack of active control although I think the Dreamer in me knows exactly what it is doing and does it, when the conscious me does not get in the way!

I think spider links into my life now in several ways.  I think Crow is beautiful and I know that Dreaming is the best gift of all.

Music for the Moons

So I have so much to post about!  I am going to start with music because I have not posted my songs for the last three Moons and I want too....  The songs that jump out at me always seem to touch me at a deeper level when I actually read the lyrics, it isn't just the sound.



For the Moon of Welcome we had Faster by Within Temptation.  This just jumped off the radio at me....  We listen to Planet Rock a lot.  And I love the words too.  It is a song about the joy of living!  Which is great for Welcome!  Running towards life...  Not hiding, not accepting lies, not living with fear, accepting your feelings....



The delights of flicking through music TV channels brought me Lana Del Rey's Blue Jeans and I fell in love with it instantly.  I don't remember having heard it before.  The song is all about a relationship that goes south when he tries to give her more by growing his career and she loses him to it.  Except that it is clear from the song that he will always be the only man for her and in the video you see them both sinking beneath the water together, and there is a light shining up at them.  Everything about this song makes me think of true love and past lives, that strongest of emotions that can and does survive death.  I feel like this.  I think F and I have been here together many times and this is what I guess I affirmed this last time throught his moon....



Finally for the Moon of Drama we have Tom Petty's Learning to Fly.  I heard this on Planet Rock again and loved it but wasn't sure if it was truly my song for the month and forgot about it until a dream this week brought it back and I woke with it in my head...  It has been there ever since!  The more I look at it and think about it and watch the video. the more inspired by it I am.  He is a very clever song writer for sure.  To me, this song is all about Drama and dealing with it, learning to live with things after they have happened, the good and the bad without letting them get you down.  Be those dramas atomic weapons testing, drugs, love or the death of JFK, we can't stay in that moment and we have to learn how to keep our equilibrium or regain it quickly, so we can keep on flying....

Work

Well I can't say too much really but things at work have gotten tricky and annoying.  We have a variety of people who can not currently fill their normal roles within the team.  We also have a variety of people who do not wish to pull their weight.  The two may or may not coincide but the combined situations are putting a lot more pressure on those in the team who do work hard, all day, every day.

When you are behind and busting a gut to catch up and there is someone else who is supposed to also be doing that job who is working at less than a fifth the speed you are it is kind of frustrating.  They avoid our core task as much as possible, doing anything they can to escape it and when they do do it, they surf the net, chat, text as much as they can.  The worst thing is my Boss is sat right there!

This moon is all about what to keep in and what to keep out - Drama with it's flip side of repression, or to me, getting it out, versus keeping it in.  Now, in chatting with my Boss about the situations in the team I have mentioned my partner in crime's attitude but my Boss does not want to see it and certainly does not want to deal with it.  How far do you have to go?  Do I need to pull with the work log and shove it in my Bosses face?  Do I need to suggest that I might feel inclined to take it to my Boss's Boss if my Boss fails to do anything?

The problem is my Boss is half the problem - there is a lack of direction for most of the team at times, a trusting that we know what to do and will do it, so weaker, less motivated members of the team tend to drift.  My Boss also often sits and surfs the net, spends large amounts of time on personal calls, takes long lunches, disappears who knows where for long periods of time.

I am furstrated that is for sure, but I also don't wish to watch potential overtime pilling up for Christmas.

So the question here is balance.  How much should I keep in and how much should I let out?

Rabbit

We have now passed into the Moon of Drama and my totem for this Moon is the Rabbit.  I was a bit disappointed with Rabbit when I first got it.  My Medicine Cards book describes Rabbit as being all about Fear and that is not neccessarily easy to see as a positive thing!  Rabbit has many aspects though and this is the aspect focused on for the cards in order to lend a balance to the deck as a whole.  Mind you, Fear is not the problem to me that it once was either.

Rabbit is the Fear Caller, because Rabbit fears everything and what it fears it calls to it.  Birds of prey, disease, snakes, traps, foxes, everything eats and kills Rabbit.  Whenever you see a Rabbit chances are it is terrified, if it isn't, it is only ever one breath away from terror.  Having passed the Spider Gate earlier this year, I think my views on Fear have changed.  But there is a power here too - Rabbit sustains everything else and it's fear helps keep it safe.  Despite all the difficulties they face, Rabbits thrive....

The European Rabbit is native to Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeiria where it is the staple food of the Iberian Lynx and Spanish Imperial Eagle.  Unfortunately it is in decline there due to introduced diseases, habitat loss and hunting.  This is having a huge impact on it's predators.

Rabbits however are doing very well everywhere else. They have been introduced everywhere except Antartica and sub-Saharan Africa.  They were first introduced to Britain by the Romans as a source of food and it is hard to imagine this country without them.  I imagine that Hares were much more common before Rabbits were introduced.  Their introduction displaces native Rabbits and Hares and in Australia, the Bilby.  In Australia they have caused huge issues because they have no predator there.

This situation has resulted in the use of biological control to try and prevent their increase.  Firstly Myxomatosis and then rabbit haemorhagic disease.  Populations are partially resistant to Myxomatosis now and although there are frequent times when the viruses are present, they do not kill every rabbit now.  However at work, if ever we see a rabbit with these diseases, we will try and kill it.  The suffering they cause is immense.

Rabbits live in warrens with a group of between 2 and 10 rabbits.  Rabbits are agressive and territorial towards each other and this helps to ensure their survival.  Females are more territorial but do not defend their territory, instead they leave dung piles and the potency of these pellets shows their dominance.  Females will move into neighbouring territories when they mature but male rabbits will move further and have to fight for females.

High status rabbits are polygamus with one male having more than one female but lower status rabbits, both males and females are monogamous.  Male status is defined by quite a few factors, how many females visit his territory, how far he travels each day, how much time he spends resting with females and how many warrens he visits.  Females will indicate they are fertile by chinning objects in their territory, covering them with scent from glands in their chin.

Maleswill fight and often injure each other and sometimes even kill.  They kick with their strong hind legs, bite and scratch.  They also squirt urine which enrages their opponent.

So much for the imge of cute, peaceable rabbits!

OK, so they do eat grass...  They are most active at dawn and dusk but are out and about during the day and at night.  They browse and graze and eat a wide range of vegetation along with their grass.  They like mixed habitats best as these give them some cover as well as grazing.

They are incredibly fertile and gestation is only 31 days with them becoming fertile again straight away.  They also ovulate when they have sex so there is no time they are not fertile.  A female can be pregnant constantly for 8 months and produce 30 - 40 offspring a year.  The female is the only one that feeds them, returning once a day for four weeks.  They are born blind and furless.  The female marks the nesting burrow to deter others from going in.  Male rabbits do have some sort of hierarchical investment in their young though.

Rabbits have been kept for food, killed as pests and kept as pets.  There are a huge number of breeds.  Some are used for their fur and the Angora is unusual in that it's fur is used for yarn and they naturally moult.  I have never been convinced that they make interesting pets but a friend had a house rabbit once and the stories he tells suggest that rabbit brought up right and trained can be very different.

I like to think of this moon as being all about getting it out and keeping it in, emotionally and finding the balance between the two.  Rabbits definately are good at getting it out - their aggression and fear are plain for everyone to see and everyone can tell they are amorous *laugh*.  They emotions make them resilient and tough as well as making them a source of creativity for nature as a whole.  Endlessly fertile, but potentially highly destructive in their fertility!....

Rabbits are warriors.  They deal with their fear and survive.  They fight when they need to.

Jack Crow

Apparently the name Jackdaw comes from Jack meaning Small and Daw meaning Bird.  The Jackdaws formed early as a species, becoming distinct from other Crows.  Some even argue they should be in their own family, Coloeus, but to me it fels like they are still part of the clan.  When I see my Magpies, Crows and Jacdaws feeding together, with the very occasional Rook, they are definately the younger, junior cousin, but they are still part of the clan.  Seven of them come to feed.

There are four subspecies of Western Jackdaws with varying territories, Monedula live in Eastern Europe but sometimes winter in England and Spermologus live in England but winter in the Canary Island and Corsica.  Spermologus do not have a white border to their grey nape and are darker in colour, so I would say that my Jackdaws are Spermologus.

Spermologus have a purple sheen to the crown, forehead and secondary feathers and a blue green on the throat primaries and tail feathers.  I think I need to spend more time looking at the Jackdaws next Summer because I have never noticed this.  The sheen is more pronounced just after moulting which occurs between June and September.  The Jackdaw is mostly slate grey with lighter grey on the cheeks, neck and nape and the legs and bill are black.

The most striking thing about Jackdaws is their eyes.  Those of the adults appear white and their stare can be un-nerving. Young Jackdaws have bright blue irises but these fade to silvery white or light grey.  But to me, against the black and grey they lok white.

Jackdaws are excellent fliers, as they are highly manoeuverable and they can glide and tumble.  They glide at about 6 - 11 metres per second, decreasing their wingspan to fly quicker.  They have jerky wing beats and look similar to Choughs and Pigeons when in flight.  Their wingbeats are deeper and faster than other Corvids and they fly in tighter flocks.  On the ground they strut, upright.

Jackdaws communicate a lot.  They make greeting noises as they fly which are described as a metallic tchaayk but I don't think that is quite right.  I can't describe their call  either though! They also have a call to summon their young or mates to food.  Females will beg for food from males and their call when doing so is similar but more drawn out.  They will cahtter together as they roost and a large flock will make a cackling sound.  When they are a week old they make a soft cheep which becomes louder until at day 18 it becomes a penetrating screech.  At Day 25 they become silent if they hear unfamiliar noises.

They like mixed habitats with a mix of large trees, buildings and open ground.  They leave wooded areas to the Jay and completely open areas to the Rook.  They have a central roost and the flock returns their each night.  Their numbers allow them to defend their nests from other corvids, who would steal eggs, but they often congregate with Hooded Crows and Rooks. 

Within the flock males and females pair-bond for life and remain together within their flock.  There is a strict hierachy within the flock.  Males establish their status before they bond and then the famles shares the same status.  Un-mated females have the lowest status.  Higher status birds will peck lower status birds and have first access to food and shelter.

They decide their status by fighting, threat displays and supplanting where one bird is displaced from a perch site.  Several threat positions have been described, bill up, bill down, defensive threat position and forward threat position.  When they fight they they launch themselves at each other and wrestle with their feet entwinned pecking at each other, other Jackdaws will gather and watch.  Another behaviour occurs within pairs where they ruffle their feathers and show their napes to encourage their mate to preen them.

Bill up - bill and head upwards with plumage sleeked.  This is used when entering a feeding flock to show assertiveness and appeasement.
Bill down - with the bill down the bird raises it's neck feathers and may slightly raise it's wings.  This is used in a stand off with another bird until one backs down or they fight.
Forward threat- pushes head forward to the bird makes a horizontal position and they may ruffle their feathers and raise wings and tail too.  Used when competing for females or nests.
Defensive threat - lowers head and neck, spreading tail and raising feathers.

Pairs are entirely faithful  and if the relationship lasts more than six months it will likely be life long.  They stay together even if they can not successfully breed.  Widowed and separated birds often fare badly as they are pushed out of thenests and territories, having to rear young alone.

Nest sites within a colony are occupied for most of the year and are made my heaping sticks into a platofrm which may become very large.  The nest is lined with hair wool and dried grass.  They will defend it from predators and other pairs.  A wide variety of places are used, trees, cliffs, aandoned buildings, chimneys, church towers, even old woodpecker nests and rabbit burrows.  The common feature is that the choosen site is sheltered.

Between 2 and 9 eggs will be laid and take 17 - 18 days to hatch as a naked chick.  They then take about a month to fledge, or grow feathers and then they are fed for a further four weeks.  The last chick to hatch will often die and if food suplies are low then the parents will not invest much time in feeding their young.  Cuckoos will lay their own eggs in Jackdaws nests and Crows, Tawny Owls and Weasels will steal eggs.

Jackdaws forage on open ground, eating small insects, snails, spiders, ocasional rodents, carrion, eggs, chiks, seeds (cultivated seeds, weed seeds, acorns...) and fruit (elderberries, cultivated fruits....).  Their diet consists of 84% vegetable matter, unless they are breeding, when they rely on insects.  They will turn over clods, peck, jump, dig, scatter and probe the soil to find food.  They spend more time exploring and turning over with their bill than other Corvids.  They also ride on other animals, pecking off ticks.

Unusually, Jackdaws share food.  This is initiated by the donor, sharing more of preferred food than less preferred food.  This is not solely about courtship or as parents and there is much higher amount of food sharing than in other species that do this.  It maybe that there are benefits to the flock as a whole for co-operating, it may allow the avoidance of harassment or that the favour is returned.  There may also be a status element.

In the UK, Jackdaws have in the past been heavily persecuted, for their perceived role as vermin of grain crops and fruit, as well as for nesting in belfries.  They can still be trapped in the UK, along with other species of Corvid, because of the belief that they raid the nests of other birds.  They can also be used as a decoy bird to lure other birds.  Personally I belief if people are really upset about the death of other birds, then maybe there should be a reduction in the number of domesticated cats.  I do not see why Corvids should be persecuted.  In this day and age there is more than enough roadkill....

Perhaps because of this persecution, Jackdaws are wary of people, often feeding where people will be in the early morning or evening.  Jackdaws raised by humans are tame however.  Of all the birds who come and feed on my bird seed, jackdaws are the most nervous and it took the longest for them to settle in my presence.  Even so, I often see them there at other times of the day, rooting out the seed that got missed.  I see them all over the place and I know of one local roost.  It seems to me they often call greetings as they fly overhead...

The Jackdaw to me seems to be most comfortable with it's own kind and has a rich social life, with deep connections to loved ones.  The are caring co-operative birds but at the same time they are nervous and more than a little quarrelsome with each other.  But they live within the rules of their society and they know where they are at and who they are.  They are clever and vocal with an understated beauty.  There is something about their eyes and their stare... but they also have good binocular vision for foraging and searching things out, which they love to do.  And they love shiny things and will even share them too

The reverse of affirmation is submissiveness and these birds represent both sides of this moon to me.  They know when to be submissive and when to affirm themselves and maybe that is what they are all about for this Moon, knowing how to balance both sides and maybe that is the best way to be, and being happy with your position.  But their intelligence and searching ways, and their vision and penetrating gaze are gifts too as is their generosity and caring.  They very quickly learn when to sing their hearts out and when to keep quiet.  They are not the biggest baddest beast on the block but they are one that gets by, by depending on their clan and co-operation is key.  I don't think being the lowest ranked member of a clan that likes to share would be so very bad....

The Welcoming Wasp

There are all sorts of Wasps, Social Wasps, Solitary Wasps, Cuckoo Wasps, Gall Wasps, Wood Wasps, Velvet Wasps.....  but I think my Wasp is a Common Wasp because Yellow Bonnet is a nickname for the common Wasp and my Wasps looked like Common Wasps and they were social.  It could be a closely related species, like the German Wasp, but they are so similar, I don't think it would make much difference - except German Wasps steal from bee hives and that does not feel right....

The lifecycle of the Wasp begins with a fertilized female, ready to take her place as Queen.  She will have hibernated in solitude for the Winter and in the Spring she emerges and eats then flying low to the ground, she hunts for a suitable nest site.  The best sites are underground, by roads, in meadows, in gardens or spruce woods, anywhere where there is a suitable opening.  Less commonly they nest above ground in hollow trees or wall cavities.

When she finds soewhere suitable, she flies around her territory, fixing it in her memory.  Then she begins to make the nest using a paper-like material she makes out of salive and old rotting wood.  She scrapes off small pieces using her mandibles and mixes it all together in to a ball and then carries it back to the nest.  The nest when finished will be a bit like a fruit, with a protective skin and a stalk from which it hangs.  Inside, suspended from the top will be a series of platforms, which are the combs, made up of hexagonal cells, open at the bottom.  She begins by spreading the mixture into a thin strip, making the stalk, the beginnings of the protective outer skin and the first few cells.  She lays her first eggs in the cells.

In the beginning the Queen is in charge of everything as she has no helpers.  She hunts and tends the larva and carries on constructing the nest.  Very soon she would not be able to do everything but the first generation  will be mature in 4 to 5 weeks and will take over all of the Queens duties, except egg laying.  It is the beginning of June generally when these first Workers, or sexually immature females are ready.  Once she has Workers she will not leave the nest again.

When they take over building, they add further supports to the comb as well as further combs, downwards, parrallel to the one above.  They rebuild and add to the protective skin, enlarging it as they go and enlarge the entrance.  The nest cavity itself often needs enlarging and they do this by carrying out fragments of stone and soil, sometimes much heavier than themselves.  Anything too big to take out, is either incorporated into the nest, such as large stones or chewed off, such as minor roots.

The hive has to grow quickly as it has a limited lifespan, come the cold the hive will die off and only a few fertilized females will survive, hibernating in solitude.  The first cells are small and are used for workers and males, later on there will be large cells as well which are used for males and females.  Each cell can be used repeatedly.  By the end there will be 8 to 10 combs of about 20 cm in diameter containing between 7000 and 10,000 cells.  The numer of large cells gives an indication of the age of the nest.  All members of a colony smell the same and differentiate the inhabitants of a different colony by their smell.

In each cell the egg is laid by the Queen and hatches into a larva, it is stuck in the cell so it can not fall out and is unable to move.  It is dependant on the workers for care and they feed it regurgitated juices with older larva taking some solid food too.  It moults three times and in the final stage is fat enough to fill the cell and not need sticking in.  It will make a silky cap over the cell entrance and then spinitself a cocoon inside which it pupates.  When it hatches it chews it's way out and remains in the nest for some time before leaving on it's first flights.

The first Males begin to appear in August and the first females in September.  A sexually mature female will be fertilized by a Male and retains the sperm in a dormant state.  When she lays eggs as a Queen she can choose whether to fertilize the egg or not, selecting the sex.  Males have no purpose within the nest except reproduction, but they are not treated cruelly and are allowed to live, unlike Bees....  Males never leave and do not have stings.  The workers can not exist without the nest and have one further task - they regulate the temperature of the nest.  If it gets too hot they vibrate their wings inside the nest and bring in water.  They also harvest a cooling secretion from the mouthparts of larva.

Towards Autumn the number of Workers drops as the number of Males and Females increases and this is the beginning of the end.  With fewer workers, the larvae starve and when their cell becomes too big for them, they fall out onto the roof of the comb below.  Once there, the workers see them as refuse and remove them from the nest where they die.  Only some fertilized females will survive, hibernating in sheds, cracks or house lofts.  Each nest only lasts one year and the new Queen will always choose a fresh site.  In less temperate countries it does appear that the Common Wasp nest can survive for more than one year.  Nests break down rapidly.

Wasps eat sweet things, like fruit and soft drinks and meat, feeding on carrion when available, but they also hunt.  They are predatory and hunt insects, but mostly flies and these are it's main food.  It attacks them when they are not flying, gripping them with it's feet, killing with it's mandibles and stinging if necessary.  It turns the insect into a parcel, biting off legs, head and wings and then carries it back to the nest.  In feeding off of the insect it sucks out the prey's juices.  This predatory role is very important in ecosystems and helps to maintain a balance within the insect world.

They do not attack unless provoked, contrary to popular opinion!  But their nature is that of a predator and they do not hesitate to defend when they feel threatened.

Wasps are instinctive and never waste time.  They are all economy and speed for they live for such a short time and they have a lot to achieve.   They always know how to make their nest and it is always perfect and it never develops.  Occasionally some other material is incorporated such as a piece of paper or polystyrene.  Wasps are born knowing how to carry on the work of their predecessors.  They build in the dark and with limited space.

*******

So everything Ted says about Wasps fits with this, but here is a summary of some of the characteristics of the Wasp.

Although there is a class sytem it is based on efficiencey not snobbery or slavery.  The Queen will have done every job a Worker will have done.
The Wasps are always moving, settling briefly before finding a new home each year.
They are completely focused on raising the next generation.
They are not cruel to lesser members of their society.
They are very inventive and will make any chosen cavity work.
Their method is perfectly efficent, it is economical and quick.
Their method is instinctual but never develops although it does adapt.
They are fiercely loyal and will die for their nest.
They are completely dependant on their nest and only the Queen can survive without it.
Everything they make uses what is around them and is completely biodegradable.
They can only survive in the warmth
They work as well in the dark as the light, building in the dark and hunting in the light.
They are well able to defend themselves.

I can see myself in this....  Wasps welcome change - new places, new starts and can adapt their knowledge for the location.  They instinctively know the right way and efficency, economy and speed comes quickly to them.  They are all about community, fiercely loyal they will fight and defend it but will also sacrifice themselves.  They will do whatever is needed within their community, whenever it is needed. They are creative, they are builders, they are engineers.  Their creativity is beautiful and has to be useful.  They are also female warriors, dedicated to the family, to continuation, they work for the greater good, for something bigger than themselves.

I have never had a problem with new places and situations - changing jobs frequently and in the past, moving around the country.  F would laugh at the bit about knowing the right way to do things and focusing on efficienecy, economy and speed - I am a master of Logistics.  He finds this both useful and infuriating (when he has not told me something that subtly alters my perfect plan).  I will do any task from top to bottom in an organisation.  I like to create but I do feel the need to create things for a use.  I have the brain of an engineer or a builder.  I am coming to understand that the community around me is more important than what I am doing, which is why I am still in my current job, because they are my family.  I am getting to grips with defending myself...  I have always felt pulled on by some purpose.  I like sweet things and warmth.

I think the Warrior side of the Wasp is the bit I have struggled with the most, this determined defence of self, self preservation.  I have not struggled so much with self-sacrifice.  Fighting back....

Maybe I knew instinctively somehow that Tim was Wasp too, family, I let myself be beaten in to giving him up.  I think the decision my family forced me in to helped define me as less a Queen and took away some of my fierce independence, my instinctive knowing of what decision I should make.  This was ultimately damaging.  I guess I dealt with my family by moving away, establishing my own nest and building my own community. 

But there is a flexibility in role for Wasps.  The Queen who can do everything but eventually retreats into the dark to be fertile.  The workers who do everything, except reproduce, who are out there working hard and fighting.  The Males who don't do a lot really, except mate, dreaming in the dark. I think I am definately stuck in Worker and I also find it really iteresting that I can not be a Worker and reproduce.  I think if ever I have children, my life will change very dramatically.

Return to Welcoming

This is my second Moon of Welcoming that I am consciously traveling.  I wrote about the first one here.  I have learnt a lot about my process since then.  I write a post looking at the Moon and how it has been in my life up to that point and then, afterwards I review that Moon cycle and see what I have added.  When I first write about it, I tend to pretty quickly afterwards have a dream which gives me some indication of my totem for that Moon.

I never did look at the Moon of Wlecoming throughout my life though, which I think I need to cover a little.  I did however write another post about Wasp.  My intention for this cycle is to look more deeply at my totems for that Moon and how they relate to that Moon.

I have traveled through three years of this Moon and in a few years time I shall have my fourth.  My first was when I was one.  I remember very little!  My parents moved into our family home on my first birthday and this was such a special home for me.  The house was long and thin so you walked through one room to get to the next and there was two staircases to get upstairs.  My parents gave me the bedroom nearest theres and I loved it.  On one side, there was a tiny window tucked under the eaves and clematis used to grow in and on the other, a huge dormer window poking out of the roof that just sucked in light.  The floor sloped down to the sides, the walls were croaked and wobbly and as I lay in bed i would listen to the comforting sounds of the house adjusting as the wood frame expanded and contracted.

14 was a bad year however.  It is the year I first became ill with glandular fever, my first year of GCSE's and the year I first got my heart a little scratched up.

My sister had a birthday party at our house and invited all her cool friends from Sixth Form College.  I met a boy called Tim who was very, very cool.  He had the whole tortured artist thing going on as well.  he had second thoughts about my age afterwards but i managed to contact him via another friend of my sisters.  Afterwards we used to talk on the phone some and one time he sent me a mix tape, which really ecpanded my music taste n nea and appreciated directions.  He is the person that introduced me to the Pixies.

We arranged to meet at a pub and go on to a party and my sister and her boyfriend took me.  When we got to the pub however, Tim was off his trolley - not sure if it was just drink or more.  He was a bit off anyway and we never really even went into the pub before my sister and her boyfriend whisked me away.

My sister and Mum were really dismissive of the whole thing and tried to stop me from talking on the phone to him.  I am not sure how exctly this whole situation could have been handled differently but I was ill and feeling powerless anyway and I ended up pretty depressed.  I understand that my family did not want me getting into hot water and seeing a boy who looked pretty unsuitable, but...  it was hard.  Losing that battle soaked away some of my power and ability to rebel and make my own path.  I was ready to stand on my own two feet a little. 

My third time through was not too good either.   I started my third year at Uni and gave up smoking.  i think giving up smoking triggered my underactive thyroid, although it was not apparent, possibly, in blood tests at the time.  I suddenly started to gain weight and became depressed, I even tried Prozac, which I hated.  I worked way too hard and got a first, but it was an unpleasant and stressful year.  Luckily F was on the scene...

Not feeling too good seems to be a feature of this year!  I was ill last time we had this Moon in January with a bad ear infection and I have been feeling somewhat up and down ever since.  The opposite of Welcoming is Rejecting and the last two years I have certainly had rejection feature - rejection of a boyfriend, rejection fo cigarettes....

But back to Wasp.  Last Moon of Welcoming I had a dream that yellow bonnet was flying around my face.  When I was a baby ( I must have been one and in Welcoming because we were in the new house), a Wasp flew in my window and stung me on the face while I slept.  After the Moon of Weloming, I had a discussion about Wasp which I talked about in this post here which was very powerful and changed the way I related to Wasp.  I have no idea if Ted really understands how much he helped me with this....

Then during the Moon of Inter-Relations I had two Wasp dreams and what is really interesting, is it was at this time I was diagnosed with Underactive Thyroid.  my ill health stemmed from the Moon of Welcoming and when it was resolved in Inter-relations, it wa Wasp who came to visit.  In one My fore finger and thumb were seized up with a Wasp caught between them, struggling to be free and it broke in two leaving me holding the stinging end.  Ted pointed out that Wasps stings are as much medicine as poison.

In the second dream my Wasps were burrowing under my house and decided they needed more room and started burrowing outwards.

I take all this to mean that I have done some valuable work on my Moon of Welcoming, enough so that my health probelms have been brought to light and I have my medicine (which would be poison to some).  My Wasp is feeling healthy enough to expand it's horizons.  I think things are looking up for my Wasp.  Next I am going to delve further into Wasp as a totem, and try and relate it to Welcoming.

Hanging in the Balance

So I am feeling quiet right now.  This happens every so often and this time of year is a point when it often does.  It is nearing my Birthday, my personal year end and year beginning and things are ending and beginning all around me.  A lot of the stories I just don't want to talk about yet because I don't have the ends, but other things I just don't seem to want to talk about.

Maybe there is just too much going on that I have not figured out exactly.  Maybe I just have too many feelings.  I woke up grumpy this morning, unable to get back to sleep at 6.30.  This is not to say life is bad... quite the opposite.  But I am avoiding people.  I am not leaving blog comments or comments on facebook or elsewhere that I should.  I am not returning my Mum's calls.

Maybe that's because they are moving out of my soul home sometime over the next couple of weeks and I just don't know what to say.
Maybe it's because my sister upset me when she was down and although everything is OK, the hurt remains a little and I don't want to have to tell my Mum what happened and have her try and mediate, because there is nothing to mediate.
Maybe it's because my dosage has been doubled and I don't want to have to analyse how I am doing to tell people where I am at yet, I don't know and I am taking each day as it comes.
Maybe it's because I am avoiding making some decisions about when and how to spend a lot of money visiting friends and there just won't be time to visit my folks in there too.
Maybe it's because I have not even discussed those visits with F yet.
Maybe it's because I have been having some really, really dark dreams which suggest that all the hard work I have done on myself over the years is not finished and because I have no idea how to resolve the next step.  But maybe the signs are that also, this is nearing the end of it....
Maybe it's because it's 2012 and the world feels like it's shifting under my feet a little, maybe I am scared of what might happen a little, I don't know, maybe I am scared nothing at all will happen....
Maybe despite my absolute joy over my friends newly announced pregnancy, maybe it just brings home to me that babies are still some way off for me, due to health, if they ever come at all...

But in that list, there is nothing I can not deal with and won't deal with, I am just very much in a lying low period.

On the good side however...

I went to an amazing drum circle.  Different circles have different energies and feelings, in part because of the different work you do at each circle.  There was a lot of new people at this one but it was also focusing on balance for the Equinox.  The feeling was absolutely blissful, with out being spacey, it was a really beautiful afternoon.  My journeys were nothing earth shattering, which is fine right now.  In fact my main journey repeated the journey I had for the Spring Equinox.  I danced through the elements and then danced into my Dragon.  The Dragon has been my totem for this year as it is my totem for Breaking Masks.  It was lovely, but it was not about me so much.  Maybe dancing the elements with my Dragon is something that should be done every Equinox, I am sure if it is, I shall find myself on this journey again.

We also did little journeys for someone else.  The person I worked with did not so much journey for me as do some healing on me, and it was lovely and I could feel it and I think I needed it more than a journey right now.  My journey for them, did not seem like much to me, but when I told them, it turned out to be a message they had been given before and it was greatly appreciated.

A friend at the circle is a felter and is going to show me how to felt.  While talking she told me about a Swan shawl she made with Swan feathers felted into it.  of course I want a corvid shawl now, and the Magpies have been really, really generous this week....

All my birds are doing fine, and I was most surprised when I looked up from my book the other day, to admire the flock of jackdaws, the Crows and the Magpies, to see a new comer....  I had my first Rook!  It is a like a little Corvid social party *laugh*  I have never seen a Rook in that area, so how it found it's way there I have no idea, maybe he heard from his Cousins.  I imagine he will be back, probably with friends.  What was surprising though was that even though it was his first time there with me sat only about two meters away, he took his cue from the others and was completely unphased by me

My hair has changed colour, from purple with neon purple splodges to blue black with violet and neon purple that makes it looke like it has an ultraviolet sheen.  I like it.  Next time I may have blue and green and look like a Magpie....

I am feeling better, but I am still waiting and I guess part of me is waiting for me to dip down again.  Things feel steadier this  time but all I can do is wait.

But something really, really amazing is in the process of coming my way, something I have been waiting for, for some time.  Something I am bursting with excitement over!  And I can't wait to bring that story together.... 

Life IS good

Spider Gate

I was gutted I could not go  to the Gathering but, I did go to a Blue Moon chat online.  During this chat, an invite popped up on my Facebook to go to a Firewalk on the 1st of September, the day after the full moon.  F was sat right next to me at the time and to my surprise he said yes, he wanted to go too.  I couldn't figure out which gates I was supposed to be thinking of trying to cross so I decided to leave it to the Dreaming and trust.

The Firewalk began with an afternoon led my MJ of Chants and Drums who took us on a journey through sacred and healing music.  It was a beautiful experience and words fail me in trying to describe both giving and receiving sound healing.  We ate and then moved on to the Firewalk.

We began by preparing the fire, moving the logs, pouring on oil, all the while setting intentions.  We stood in a circle round the fire as twilight began and then something very strange happened.  There was a buzzing, as if a really, really huge insect was there, and it would have been the biggest insect I had ever seen.  It started really close to me and then in moved around the circle several times.  And not one person could see it.  It came really close, so close it should have been right in my face.  Even stranger, F thought we were all looking at something, he does not remember hearing it at all.  I think we were visited by something, blessed, but I have no idea what, except it had wings and was pretty big...

we carried on and we confronted our fears by breaking an arrow against our necks, with the point in the soft part of our throat.  I have yet to wind wool round mine and make it into a prayer arrow, but I shall....

And then it was time and we went into the dark to walk fire.

under the light of the blue moon.

and again words fail.

and yes I was scared but you have admit your fear, be realistic about your obstacle and then do it anyway, picturing yourself on the other side....

I wondered whether this would count as passing the Spider Gate and Lisa confirmed it did but I also had a dream.  In the Dream I was at my spirit home walking from the front to back garden.  Little Dog dashed through the Side gate before me and I turned to lose it behind us, only to realise that a huge spide was sat on it.  It was the size of a tarantula but spiky instead of hairy...  I quietly continued closing the gate and respectfully retreated and watched it.  unfortunately Little Dog saw it and began to bark at her.  She shot a bit of web at her at which Little Dog took off, dragging the Spider behind her.  I shouted for my Dad and because I started running through different scenarios of what to do with the Spider when we finally stopped the Dog, the dream ended.  I do know that despite such options as boot and stone that I had decided not to kill the Spider because it belonged in a zoo and not to leave it in the garden because it would die when the Winter came.

I woke up pumped...  and then I was upset because I thought maybe I had failed the test beause I had been scared.  But then I realised the lesson came after I had passed through the side gate, the gate with spider on it, the Spider Gate, the SpIDEr Gate.  And how cool is that?

I think the lesson was about how fear should be respected.  The things we should be afraid of are things that can hurt us and those we love and fear is what helps us survive.  It helps us to have to energy to fight or to run (it took me ages to come down and get back to sleep!).  We should respect fear but not let it rule our lives or our actions.  I guess in deciding not to kill the Spider maybe I did pass....

So I have bee initiated into one gate by the life and the Dreaming and it was not how I expected it to be at all.  It was also not the gate I was expecting either, not at all.  But it was an incredible experience from start to finish, and who knows what will come next as I walk with Spider.

Introduction to the Blue Moon

The Blue Moon is different from all the other Moons.  It is the Centre of the circle and is there for us all the time but every so often the procession of Moons jumps out of it's little orbiting circle and we have a Blue Moon.  This happens whenever there are two full moons in a month, about once every three years.  It also has the effect of resetting the procession of the Moons so the next Moon will be the Moon of Welcoming.  Without a Blue Moon, this Moon would have been the Moon of Breaking Masks and next moon would have been the Moon of Reason.

Every Blue Moon is special but this one is even more so.  It is a time of power and initiation.  The Gates open and if we pass the test we can enter and draw on the power of that gate until the next Blue Moon.  Normally we have a communal gate and a personal inner and outer gate we can attempt but this year, all sixteen of the gates opened. This is a powerful year.

My Teacher Lisa hosted a Gathering in Canada and the things that have come up during that Gathering are pretty phenomenal and they have only just started with the stories. 

I could not go however.  I did not have the money or the energy or the time off from work.  I guess I had other places I needed to be.  I needed to look at the Spider Gate and I shall write a post on that next.

My first Year of the Blue Moon started when I was born..  I was premature as my Mothers blood pressure shot up they induced me.  Although I was not very premature, I was very tiny, so I spent some time in an incubation unit before being taken home to Golders Green, London. But sometime during this year, my parents found the house they wished to move to outside London in the country and this dream to live a different life came true and on my first birthday we moved in.

Now, thirty five years later, my parents are moving out and just two days after my birthday they will no longer live in that beautiful place, just days before the end of the Blue Moon.  I love how writing makes me think...  It makes me wonder if living their was my dream, what my first ever blue moon brought to me.  There was a Blue Moon my first July too and I wonder if that helped.

The house I grew up in was over 400 years old, an pair of old farm hand cottages knocked together and extended over the years, set in an acre of land, planted with thought to the future, full of fruit trees and bushes.  It nurtured my soul and is the place I start my journeys.  One journey we were asked to go and meet the spirits of our special place and I met Grandma and Grandpa Crow and talked with them.  I have written all this before here.  And how powerful it was for me in the letting go and the binding of myself to that land on a deeper level.  Those spirits have always protected and nurtured me, and they are always there for me now, because I can go there any time through the dreaming.  Anyway realising all the synchronicities with the Blue Moon makes me think that I was very blessed and living in the home of my dreaming, watched over by Crows was....

I should maybe say at this point that my totem for the Blue Moon is the Crow and indeed not only were these guardian spirits Crows but my ancestral guide is a Crow too.  Many generations ago a young man married a young lass by the name of Crow.  I wonder about this surname too and how it came about...  The journey during which I met my guide was pretty amazing too...

My second year of the Blue Moon is a bit of a blank, I was 13.  I think it may have been around this time I developed a decided interest in boys and when the powere of the Horse began to wane in my life.  I think it is probably the time I began to rebel, gave up the musical instruments I had played, stopped riding, started Young Farmers and drinking.  A time of change....  If it set the tone for the next thirteen years then they sure were tricky.

My third year of the Blue Moon was a powerful one too for sure.  I was about to start my third year at Uni.  I was a good student, a very good student.  And all of a sudden my tank was empty and I knew I could not do it.  I decided to take a year out.  Everyone was shocked and horrified but I went ahead and did it anyway, literally within days of my birthday.  I think everybody thought I would not come back, that I was giving up.  It didn't help that I could not explain what I was doing or why, I just knew I had to do it.

That weekend I became very ill and called a friend to take me to Casaulty where I was admitted for a minor op to remove an abscess as my temperature had become dangerously high.  It took me weeks of sleeping to grow new flesh and return to strength and finally everybody understood.  Jobs lined themselves up pretty well for the rest of the year, two short term jobs  that took me through to the true beginning of my third year and related to my degree.

But that is not the most important thing about that year for it is the year I met F.

It makes me wonder about the other Blue Moons I have lived through...  and looking at the dates I can see a link to big things in my life.   Decisions made that took me in a new decision, either for me or by me such as changing schools, starting jobs, moving.  As well as events such as meeting a new love, breaking up and illness.  Interestingly, in some parts of the world this moon is not a Blue Moon and the next moon is.  A narrow slice of the world has no Blue Moon at all this year.

Moon of Surrender Review

Well this moon has been characterized by a general downward slide in energy levels.  I didn't go down as far as I had sunk after our honeymoon but I did go down.  The weekends became more and more about sleeping and life settled in to a pattern of energy conserving and getting through the working week and then crashing at the weekend.

The big thing during this week was the arrival of my Sister and her kids and it was lovely to see them but really, I was too tired to cope well.  I was good and held it together mostly with them but my frustrations clearly show on this blog.  I slept whenever I could, sometimes even in just a few minutes while I was alone in a room.

In large ways this holiday was not about my sister and I spending time together though and my sister clearly showed that this was not her prime aim.  The children were, and this included S.  The bit that really upset me was that Thursday was to be our last evening together, she was to have already eaten before she came over and after this we would only see her briefly before she left Saturday.  Anyway, I brought dessert and borrowed a film I thought everyone would like, but they did not show.  At 7.30 I had a call telling me that she had decided to treat S to a meal as it was their last night together and they had just ordered.  I was very hurt.  I told her that I go to bed at 10 and the closer it gets to that time the more difficulty I have with things.  I also pointed out that as she did not want S to stay the night she needed to remember that F was on an early shift and would then have to drive S elsewhere.  There was no question of us joining them, we had already eaten and it would have taken a while to get where they were.  i was very, very hurt.

I know my Sister feels bad.  I know she just packed too much in to the day and it was too late and everyone was hungry.  I even got a sorry from her later.  But she turned up here at 9.30 and after a full on week and working, it was just too much.  F and I still have quite a bit of Vienetta to eat though *laugh*

The thing is, we did not lose it at each other but I expressed enough for her to kow how hurt I was and she said enough so I knew where her head had been.  I can not remember the last time she said sorry to me.  Believe me, this is some progress between us....

And that was it for the Moon really.  Sleeping and dealing with what life brought to me.



So this was my song for the Moon.  It literally jumped out at me.  I was at work with one colleague and we had the radio on and this came on and Boom!  The more I read the words too.....  And then I found the words Dream On for my Dreamboard that night.  And after years of neither of us ever hearing this song, it was on the radio all the time.

My totem for this Moon turned out to be Horse, which was not a huge surprise, I was very strongly drawn to them about this time.  My dream though took me back to younger days and tending to the needs of Horse.  Not about riding them and the wild freedom but literally shoveling s***.  I guess this true right now for me, I am tending the energy, nurturing it, conserving it, definately not using it!  This dream went on though into another one all about my Dragon totem for Breaking Masks the next moon.  However Breaking Masks will be skipped in this sequence because the next moon is a Blue Moon.  Breaking Masks is my current moon of the year however and this too comes to an end soon, and then I start my year of Reason.  I shall do posts for both....

My picture is this one....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/delartful/5409690936/

And I love it, it sums it up beautifully.  Surrendering to the Dreaming, to the tides of what will be, Sleeping.  Those could even be Dandelion seeds carrying wishes....

She sat on the top of the cliff, her back to the sea.  
She sat in a field full of Dandelions and their seed.
She sat as her Dreaming self took flight into the sea.
She sat as she was carried away, as she was freed.

She danced on the Waves and explored undersea Caves
She flew through the air and left behind all her cares
She went everywhere and nowhere
She grew wings and she grew fins

She never wanted to return to all that made her blue
She searched coral gardens and rainbows
She hunted for a door her body could step through
She moved through stars and dark matter

She could not find a gate anywhere
and then she remembered, the one place she had not searched
a field where a sleeping girl sat dreaming amongst the dandelion faeries
and a gate glowing within her body

Moon of Surrender Introduction

Surrender is all about going with the flow, not resisting, not fighting.  Wheelkeeper describes it as letting go of the emotional reactions, the reactions of our ego.  Surrendering is nowhere near the same as repressing though, repressing is unhealthy.  Of course we all have emotional reactions but the important thing is to do the work in understanding these reactions.  Looking at Fears, understanding why we are angry and so on....

This feels like a good Moon for me right now as I adjust to my changing body.  And things are changing.  The more I read the more I realise that all my health problems are related to my Thyroid and I have many years of problems to turn back through.  It started at 8 with Hydradenitus Surrativa, a skin condition I still have (possible cause of later thyroid problems).  Then at 12 I got strange pains in my joints that were diagnosed as Rheumatism, they went away in my late teens.  At 14 I got very ill and although tests never confirmed it was Glandular Fever it probably was.  Then at 19 I definately got Glandular Fever and it turned into Chronic Fatigue.  After I moved to Cornwall I developed Hayfever, IBS and dry eyes.  Shortly after giving up smoking I started to pile on weight, that no diet ever permanently shifted, in fact diets resulted in me putting on more weight in the long run.  Depression has haunted me through the years too, causing me to do so much work on myself that eventually I got to a place of contentment, when you know you have nothing else to be sad about you know how you feel is physical not mental....  And through all this there has been never-ending tiredness....

I don't think I had realised how tired I really felt.  The last few months when it got really bad and mucked up all my hormones too, I didn't have the nergy to even feel, I was just in a complete fog.  As this fog has lifted, all the other niggles have become evident.  My stomach now tells me when it feels full or when I have eaten badly I feel queasy.  I feel strange pains.  My head fog has lifted enough for me to be conscious of what remains, a headache that comes and goes.  My IBS has vanished completely.  My Rheumatism returned.  The clock is turning back for my body, but I am not daft enough to think that all that damage can go overnight.

I am making progress and this I am overjoyed at!  I hope to work with my Doctor to get my dosage right and experiment with drugs till I find the right cocktail. I am so thankful he decided to diagnose me.  But I do need to surrender to this process.  I can not rush it....

This has always been a tricky Moon for me.  First time round at the age of 8, I changed school.  I went from a mixed school to a girls school, state run to private run and I got bumped up a year by accident too.  It was really tough.  I had just started to realise I was a tomboy and started to find my place and now I was with a bunch of girls...  I was also with a group of girls who came from much richer homes than I did, many of whom were living away from home for the first time and dealing with things I could not imagine, comfy inmy secure family, going home every night.  These difficulties cause them to bond very closely in ways us few day girls could never match.  Then too, I had gone from being top of my class, to being bottom, being tested for Dyslexia and receiving extra tuition at break times....

Everything about me rebelled.  This was when my skin first started to erupt.  And other things erupted too.  I had so much anger and frustration inside me, and they came out.  The other girls would wind me up and I would lose it and hit out like a windmill with all my might.  Some girls would wind me up on purpose.  I hated it, hated losing control.  And of course it only made things worse, not better.

I learnt to ruthlessly control my anger, and along with it many of my other emotions too.  But Anger is such a positive and powerful thing in the right place.  It protects us and helps keep us safe.  With it comes our passion, our fire and they bring creativity.  In repressing my Anger, I lost so very much.  In later years a friend conducted an exercise with me where different seats in a room represented me, my anger and other times and feelings in such a way as I could talk with my anger.  It was very powerful and moving.  My anger was so sad.  It had been the anger of an eight year old and it had been trying to help as best it knew, trying to protect me.  This was a real turning point for me, late on in my second Year of Surrender.  It was probably the first bit of work that resulted in me returning a piece of my shattered soul to it's home.  It didn't happen overnight, it took time and work and persistence...

My second year of Surrender had begun very badly, or very well, depending on your view.  I collapsed under the strain of carrying my emotional pain and repression from the rape a year before and had a nervouse breakdown.  I had to break in order to get well I think, but my 21st birthday was horrid, a meal with  just my parents in a pub we never go to and have never been since, sat in a corner feeling retched.

Breaking allowed me to mend and I started to remake my world from scratch, looking at everything I thought and felt and deciding what to keep and looking for new material to fill the gaps.  I had counselling and I read and read.  On my return to the city I temped and eventually began a job where I met the lady who helped with my Anger.  I remember deciding that I did not want to let my experiences make me hard or cynical.  I guess this year was all about mending.

I had a lovely boyfriend at the time, who I will always be fond of.  I remember one counselling session released my anger, but of course I had no idea what to do with it!  And there was so much!  We had some chipped ornaments and broken things and my bf and I took them into the garden so I could smash them to pieces.  But I was still angry.  So we went upstairs and shouted and screamed at each other.  So convincing did we sound that a housemate watching TV in the extension to the house came up to our attic room to make sure we were not killing each other....

This year not only saved my life, but I had the opportunity to save someone else's.  One of my housemates tried to kill himself after a break up and I was the only one in the house at the time.  I think such a thing creates a powerful bond.  He has had a hard road, dealing with addiction and mental health issues, but he seems to have come out the other side, and he has a beautiful daughter now...

Last year was my third year of Surrender and to be honest it was pretty calm!  I first dreamed of being a Dreamer early on in the year and went on to connect with Lisa.  I took part in BIG, an e-course looking at intuitive painting.  Things began to settle a little for me at work.  The Little Princess left and my Boss started on the path of trying to repair the damage, mostly by blaming it all on the Little Princess and pretending it never happened - which is fine, society depends on these polite fictions!

Surrender for me last year, was all about reconnecting with the Universe, with the magic, with my place in things and who I truly am.  I quite like Surrender, but it really has not been easy for me over the years....

So this next month, I am just going to keep on keeping on.  Waiting and watching.  Onwards and upwards.